It has long been known that combustion of gasoline and diesel fuel in internal combustion engines produces a variety of air-polluting by-products including hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide. Such pollution can cause serious health problems for humans and animals alike, and is generally considered to be a factor contributing to "global warming" due to the "greenhouse effect".
Practically speaking, pollution from internal combustion engines cannot be entirely eliminated or prevented, but it can be reduced. The amount of pollutants an engine produces depends on how cleanly and efficiently the engine burns the fuel. It is therefore highly desirable to develop new ways of improving the efficiency with which fuels are burned in internal combustion engines.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,069,191, issued to Scouten on Dec. 3, 1991, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,148,794, issued to Scouten on Sep. 22, 1992, disclose related attempts to improve the efficiency of internal combustion engines. The Scouten patents teach devices which may be installed in the fuel lines of a vehicle to agitate the fuel before it is introduced into the engine of the vehicle. Any of the Scouten devices may be summarily described as a tube having inside it a flow divider which causes fuel passing through the device to be diverted, agitated, and swirled around before proceeding on to the engine.
Tests performed on vehicles fitted with the Scouten devices reportedly indicated reductions in carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons in the exhaust emissions from the vehicles, as compared to emissions from the same vehicles before the devices were fitted thereon. The Scouten patents state the belief that the agitation and mixing action caused by the devices results in molecular disturbances in the fuel which promote more efficient combustion.
While they may be capable of producing beneficial effects, the Scouten devices have significant drawbacks in that they entail complicated fabrication, and to close manufacturing tolerances. They are correspondingly expensive to make, and therefore less readily accessible to vehicle owners having limited financial resources.
Accordingly, there is a need for a fuel mixing and agitating device which can be installed in the fuel lines of internal combustion engines to promote cleaner combustion and reduced production of air-polluting by-products, while at the same time being simpler in construction and therefore more economical to manufacture than known devices having similar purposes.